The China Transportation Program supports policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption in the transportation sector, and to improve air quality by reducing tailpipe emissions of conventional air pollutants.

China is the world’s largest new-vehicle market, and its road, rail, aviation, and water transportation account for more than 60 percent of national oil consumption. The need to address oil security and urban air pollution has become more critical than ever before. Yet the auto industry resists the shift toward more efficient, lower emission vehicles, and there is little political will to establish clear goals and roadmaps for clean-fuel development. Furthermore, local environmental regulators have neither sufficient authority nor the capacity to address deteriorating air quality from vehicle emissions.

To contend with these challenges, the Transportation Program works with the national and local governments to develop more stringent new-vehicle regulations, accelerate the retirement of old vehicles, and promote new vehicle technologies, while advancing more efficient and clean transportation modes, and clean fuels.

The Transportation Program is particularly interested in efforts to:

• Support a system of fuel-efficiency regulations that covers all vehicle types in China, gradually approaching the leading international European and Japanese levels;
• Support the development of increasingly stringent new vehicle emissions standards and clean-fuel standards, and their timely and effective implementation;
• Promote the rapid development and commercialization of new energy vehicles, and help them leapfrog over fossil-fuel-intensive technology and production; and
• Promote the integration of China’s road, rail, and other transportation modes, and shift toward more efficient options for long-distance freight transport.